[ Q & A ] Today we interview SteemPayments.com - Steve Walschot

Question: We have to ask what got you into Steemit to begin with?

SteemPayments.com: I loved the idea of having a decentralized forum where posts would be kept forever in the blockchain. This has huge potential where others failed to remain neutral and decentralized. The earning system attached to it is also a very great reason to join Steemit!

Question: Where do you see SteemPayments ultimately heading? Can you give an example how someone might use it ?

SteemPayments.com: SteemPayments is an initiative to prevent where most other cryptographic currencies failed; having decentralised ways to accept payments as merchant or individual. As for now, we always needed to rely on a third party to process those payments.

SteemPayments is fully decentralized, and the end users needs nothing more than just hooking up to a public Steem node, enter his receiving address (account name) in the settings, or API call, and he's ready to receive payments. Without any third party, truly decentralized.If you like to receive donations for your Q&A for example, you could simply use SteemPayments to show your users a nice, friendly UI how to send you a payment without any hassle for both sides.

Question: Do you know of any other projects similar to SteemPayments being done?

SteemPayments.com: Steem has a huge collection of top notch programmers involved, but their projects are mainly in NodeJS or Python. However, most websites running (and potentialy wanted to accept STEEM) are limited to PHP shared hosting servers.That's where SteemPayments comes to play, since their is no similar project offering this kind of services so far. I'm sure in the future, similar projects will arise since Steempayments will be fully open source.

Question: I know it’s early, but where do you think SteemIt is going in the near future?

SteemPayments.com: I feel that steemit is still walking in it's baby shoes. There are many things still needed to be learned for everyone involved. However, it has huge potential of growth. Maybe someday, we'll have a decentralized Facebook built on the STEEM chain, who knows.For now, i'll keep tight on my earned Steem's, that's for sure!

Update: Here is the updated GUI:http://steempayments.com/gui1

Update 2: Here is Steve's opening post for Beta testers! https://steemit.com/steemit/@steve-walschot/first-steem-payment-gateway-ready-soon-looking-for-feedback-opinions-and-testers

Thanks for reading! If you are interested in being interviewed send us an email: steemitqa@gmail.com .